The 'Magic Negro'

In a CD sent to friends as a Christmas gift, aspiring Republican National Committee Chairman Chip Saltsman included a song parody about Barack Obama that satirized him as a "magic Negro."

During the brief contretemps that ensued as a result of Saltsman's musical tastes, I smiled wryly to myself.

I first came across the phrase a few years ago in a review of the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, which starred Will Smith as a black golf caddy who makes everything right for his sports hero boss (played by Robert Redford). Smith's character subsequently dies--but continues to help Redford from beyond the grave.

Intrigued by the term, I investigated further and discovered the phrase has been used to describe the stereotype of a saintly, nonthreatening black person who has no other interest in life--and serves no other literary purpose--than to further the happiness of whites by guiding them gently toward the light: true love, economic or personal fulfillment, whatever.

These transformations are accomplished, apparently, as a result of his blackness or status as "the other." And the "magic Negro" wills these changes in his companion purely through self-effacing goodness and the absence of any personal life or defining characteristics.

The best-known example in literature is Uncle Remus, the narrator of the folk tales and songs written by pro-slavery Atlanta journalist Joel Chandler Harris in 1881. He was depicted as a kindly elderly slave, surrounded by white children as he narrated the stories of Br'er Rabbit and other animals. He is a more extreme version of Uncle Tom, the title character from Harriet Beecher Stowe's iconic novel.

In modern fiction, Stephen King has perhaps made most use of the "magic Negro" figure, creating such characters in The Shining, The Stand and The Green Mile.

And in the world of film, Sidney Poitier owed much of his early career to this type of role in such films as The Defiant Ones, Lilies of the Field and To Sir, With Love. The stereotype is still alive today in the companion character who makes a brief appearance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Watching Barack Obama take the oath of office on Tuesday, all too aware of the grave challenges ahead, I wondered whether the entire country--not only whites--now feel this man can magically bring about extraordinary change. (Why, exactly, were 200,000 Berliners driven to explosive delight last summer?)

To be sure, I consider Obama an exceptional person, intellectually gifted, but he's not perfect. I think he has few concrete accomplishments under his belt and even lacks true, defined political passions.

While I admire his oratorical skills, I do believe the praise he receives is out of proportion to his talent partly because, I feel, black politicians are expected to be great speakers. But in spite of all this, since his stunning upset victory in Iowa last January, he has been hailed--largely by the media--for his superhero-like status.

And now that he has ascended to the stratosphere, everybody, to a certain degree, believes in his magical powers. He is the black man who will bring us together, heal all our ills and, according to African-Americans of all ages, prove to little black boys and black girls that anything is possible, even the presidency.

Wait a minute. Obama is an exceptional individual, but he was also brought up outside traditional African-American culture. When I first saw Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention, delivering that first head-turning speech, that observation stood out to me. True, he was "African-American," because The Washington Post and The New Yorker had both highlighted this fact numerous times, and, of course, he looked it. But his life story is certainly not typical among most American blacks.

In fact, this "skinny kid with a funny name" is more than an anomaly; he's a rarity in the United States. It's a fact that whites take for granted, but few blacks can: Obama wasn't "acting black." He is a man of enormous self-possession, unlike the passive sidekicks documented in books and movies.

Further, Obama doesn't qualify as an innocuous "magic Negro" because his background sets him apart. He is the son of an immigrant father from Africa, who, it's true, would have experienced the same racism suffered by any black American. But I believe the elder Obama would have been doubly discriminated against--since he would have also been scorned as a foreigner by those very black Americans now delirious with joy over his son's monumental achievement.

So over the course of Obama's first 100 hours, his first 100 days or even his first term, let's leave the problematic concept of the "magic Negro" in fiction and film--where it belongs.